Did he win… and just never got to experience it?
Contesting & The Mandela Effect
When I watched Chris Grieder’s video Did I make a classic Super Bowl commercial and somehow never know? I immediately thought, this is one of those stories that sits right at the intersection of contesting and consciousness. (You may remember I discovered Chris on TikTok and interviewed him in 2022 about Bending Reality!)
I won’t reiterate the video below, as Chris tells his story so well; I just want to share the ideas that came to me.
From a Contest Queen perspective, when you enter something big, especially a creative contest, you’re not just submitting an entry. You’re placing a stake in possibility. You’re saying, this prize could be mine. Whether it wins or not, it builds skill and courage.
From an Idea Majesty marketing perspective, I always remind people that contest rules are a legal and binding contract between the entrant and the sponsor. This is why I read the rules carefully, especially for creative contests. I found a 2011 set of contest rules from the Doritos Crash the Super Bowl contest, and the clause that stuck out to me was this one:
By entering this Contest and uploading your Submission, you irrevocably grant to Sponsor and their agents the unconditional and perpetual right to post, display, publish, use, adapt, edit, and/or modify such Submission in any way, in any and all media, for any purpose, without limitation, and without consideration to you. Finalists agree to irrevocably assign and transfer to the Sponsor any and all rights, title, and interest in Submission, including, without limitation, all copyrights, and waive all moral rights in Submission. All Contest Entrants further agree to release and indemnify and hold harmless the NFL Entities (as defined below), Sponsor and the Contest Parties from any and all claims that any commercial, advertising, presentation, Web content or any other material subsequently produced, presented, and/or prepared by or on behalf of Sponsor infringe on the rights of Entrant’s work as contained in any Submission.
From a Words For Winning perspective, this feels like a powerful reminder that success does not always unfold on our timeline. Sometimes it’s immediate. Sometimes it’s delayed. Sometimes it circles back years later in a way you never could have predicted.
It also made me think about all the “non-winning” creative contest entries sitting quietly in drawers, on hard drives, or on YouTube channels with barely any views. Just because something didn’t place at the time doesn’t mean it had no impact. It may have been planting a seed you couldn’t see yet.
Back to Chris’s theories on what happened. What do you think? Is this about memory? Algorithms? Collective belief? Something more mystical? I don’t believe this is simply an example of not knowing you’ve won. A win of that magnitude would be on your radar, in your inbox, and in your bank account.
Either way, it’s a fascinating case study in how creativity, contracts, and collective memory collide.
Do you remember seeing Chris’s commercial? And if you do, can you help him solve the mystery?
